medieval history

Cessville Evidence Kit

To engage imaginations of the young peoples of Haydock Sports College with Historical Enquiry, Neil Winterburn worked with Teacher Kathy Finnigan to invent a fictional Medieval Town called Cessville.

Cessville was a smelly, disgusting place, full of bitter rivalries, where everybody is out for themselves.
The group would soon find out that one of the townsmen had been murdered!!
As a first step to getting to know Cessville, the young people were asked to work in pairs to re-create a character based on a box of historical evidence, for the rest of the project they would think like that character, in order to solve the mysterious murder of Ned Flanders, the town do-gooder.
It was very important to us that the evidence we were giving the young people was incomplete and ambiguous. As we handed the evidence boxes over to the young people, we hadn't decided who had killed Ned Flanders, or what were the exact nature of the relationships between the townsfolk. The evidence we gave them was incomplete, because we wanted the young people to use their imaginations as well as their reasoning skills, to sort through the evidence and construct their own Cessville.
The young people were given a kit containing replica Primary and Secondary evidence, and an investigation board. All the 'evidence' developed for the Cessville Kit, is available as word documents to download , use and adapt, for free at the bottom of the page.

They used one side of their board to arrange their evidence.
They used the other side to start to develop their theories as to Who Killed Ned Flanders!

Below are the word documents needed to create the Cessville Evidence Kit, feel free to use, adapt and share, please attribute to Just Association.